It Is My Desire to Be Free: Annie Davis's Letter to Abraham Lincoln and Winslow Homer's Painting "A Visit from the Old Mistress"

Hussey, Michael; Eder, Elizabeth K.

Social Education, v74 n3 p126-130 May-Jun 2010

"Mr. President, It is my Desire to be free," wrote Annie Davis to Abraham Lincoln, 20 months after he issued the Emancipation Proclamation. The Emancipation Proclamation affected only those parts of the country that were in rebellion against the United States on the date it was issued, January 1, 1863. The slaveholding border states of Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri had remained in the Union and were thus exempt from the Proclamation. In Lincoln's words, all areas under Union control were "left precisely as if this proclamation were not issued." Not until the ratification of the 13th Amendment on December 6, 1865, would slavery be abolished throughout the United States. This article discusses Annie Davis's letter to President Lincoln and Winslow Homer's painting "A Visit from the Old Mistress," which depicts a scene that would have been unlikely when Annie Davis wrote to President Lincoln a decade earlier. The authors present suggested teaching activities using copies of the Emancipation Proclamation, Annie Davis's letter and Homer's painting. (Contains 4 notes.)